Music Mavens, I Need You!

A couple of things have been occupying large chunks of my brain lately and the only way to stop dwelling on them is to air them out publicly. The first is a matter of fact, the second of opinion (although, like all of you likely to comment, I have pretty strong feelings and, since it's my blog, my opinion will serve as fact. Don't like it, get your own blog.)

First, The Small Faces. Steve Marriott quit the band and the remaining members, Ronnie Lane, Ian McLaglen and Kenney Jones, recruited Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood. For their first album, First Step, they remained The Small Faces, but soon grew, dropping the "small" and remaining The Faces. Substantially the same group, they changed their entire musical style.

Now, how often has this happened? I can't really come up with many and I need all of your musical knowledge to help. The best I could come up with is Fun Boy Three springing from the ashes of The Specials. Go to it!

Second, the baseball fans among you know the fun we have with stats. One of my faves is "Decade Leaders." You get some funny names when you arbitrarily set the goal posts. For example, the hit leader for the 1990's is _____ (I'll wait a second...waiting...waiting....waiting) ___ Mark Grace with 1754. By no means the best hitter of the decade, as anyone who, like myself, attended hundreds of Cubs games in that decade can attest, he fits the criteria of 1990-1999.

I was thinking of how many rock stars were producing at a high level for an entire decade as defined above. Here's my list so far:

Bowie - 1970's

The Who - 1970's

Springsteen - 1980's and 2000's

U2 - 1980's

Dylan - 2000's

That's it so far. Don't tell me Dylan in the 1960's (he started recording in 1962), and don't tell me Zep until you go listen to In Through the Out Door again.

There you go, from my obsessing brain to yours. Have fun!